Friday, March 4th, 5:00pm

Just Because You Build It, Doesn’t Mean They’ll Come (Though They Did Come to Fund the Fine Arts Library Recording Studio): Using Crowd-Funding for Special Projects

Abstract
Conventional ways of fundraising laid out in Peter Munstedt’s Money for the asking: fundraising in music libraries (a volume in the MLA’s Basic Manual Series) only three years ago did not include crowd-funding. Such is the speed of change. Now that crowd-source fund-raising techniques are starting to become accessible to institutions, librarians can make use of a tool that can significantly assist with finding the money necessary to realize a project. This presentation will lay out the strategic fundraising plan that was created for the University of Texas Libraries first crowd-funding campaign to fund the Fine Arts Libraries Recording Studio. The plan was created by a development professional in hopes of using it as a template for future projects that librarians would head themselves. In addition to sharing lessons learned in planning the campaign to raise $10,000, and in running the 45-day campaign itself, this presentation will include project management and team building efforts. Attendees will learn helpful tips on identifying projects suitable for crowd-funding, setting fundraising goals, outlining media and communications timelines, and finding creative ideas for outreach, cultivation, and stewardship. As far as we have been able to ascertain no US academic library heretofore has employed such a campaign to assist a general purpose library. The presentation is based on a campaign that gained momentum in week one and eventually exceeded not only the original goal, but also the stretch-goal of $15,000.